What is "Mind?"

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Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Nov 3, 2018 - 09:16am PT

Keep on dancin'...

[Click to View YouTube Video]
yanqui

climber
Balcarce, Argentina
Nov 3, 2018 - 09:25am PT
Werner: "She" meant "mathematics". This noun is in fact feminine in Spanish: "La Matemática" so maybe the feminine connotation isn't such a stretch, after all.

Thanks for the musical interlude, Marlow (my wife asked: what is that?!).
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Nov 3, 2018 - 09:30am PT

Yanqui

The song is telling the tale of the devil playing fiddle and youth dancing and dancing until skin and bones fall apart.

We all do, don't we? :o)

It's an old Swedish tale.
yanqui

climber
Balcarce, Argentina
Nov 3, 2018 - 09:34am PT
Marlow: personally, I'm still entertained by the dance. We'll see if that lasts until my bones and skin fall off. In any case, my bones and skin are bound to fall off, just the same. Cheers!
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Nov 3, 2018 - 09:35am PT

Yes, as long as we burn, we dance, it's a good thing... dancing in light and dark...
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 3, 2018 - 11:54am PT
Google translate detected the language and translated to English. It also provided a Spanish translation without being asked to. Coincidence?


Stop your bow, fiddler
Before we dance out life and soul and bones
No he doesn't stop his dance
Until we all fall dead down


Detén tu arco, violinista
Antes de bailar la vida y el alma y los huesos.
No, no detiene su baile.
Hasta que todos caigamos muertos


Here is a probability puzzle I came across back in approx 1970:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_or_Girl_paradox
Marlow

Sport climber
OSLO
Nov 3, 2018 - 11:57am PT

It also provided a Spanish translation without being asked to. Coincidence?

Similar tales are told in many countries. In Norway too...
yanqui

climber
Balcarce, Argentina
Nov 3, 2018 - 02:27pm PT
Here is a probability puzzle I came across back in approx 1970:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_or_Girl_paradox

Now you're talking! I didn't know about that one, although it makes sense. Actually, probability and statistics is the one area I've avoided in mathematics. I took one class 30+ years ago (not a negative experience) and never taught the subject. My wife does the probability and statistics in our family (she works at a different college from me). She calls her area "Biometría" (Biostatistics would be a better translation for this now I see the meaning of "Biometrics" in Wiki) and likes to apply it to genetics (another subject I know next to nothing about). When you have personalities like me and my wife, specializing in different areas can be an advantage. I like group theory (a mathematical formulation of symmetry), geometry and complex analysis, but at one time or another, I've taught just about every undergraduate subject (in math) except probability and statistics.

For better or worse, it seems probability and statistics are becoming the language of choice in the modern biological sciences. Of course in QM we have "Bell's Theorem", "nonlocality" and all that tricky stuff Ed has talked about, which seems to make probability and statistics rather fundamental in that area. Even modern robotics (machine learning) has probability built right in (depending on the applications). It's hard to get away from it, in science, these days.

Edit to add: it seems these newfangled Biometrics dudes have appropriated a word long used by Biostatisticians. The "International Biometric Society" has been around since 1947 and doesn't have anything to do with these creepier, new newfangled Biometrics dudes I read about when I google the term.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Biometric_Society


Ward Trotter

Trad climber
Nov 3, 2018 - 02:41pm PT
That sh#t happens is only the beginning. The cross humans bare is trying to come up with tenable explanations, hence all the sturm und drang:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/09/dinosaur-extinction-debate/565769/

The ad hominems apparently got pretty nasty.


Part of what happens when "shit happens" boundary is broached.
yanqui

climber
Balcarce, Argentina
Nov 3, 2018 - 02:56pm PT
Thanks for the article, Ward. I think Mike L might even like that one, if he's listening.
Ed Hartouni

Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Nov 3, 2018 - 03:00pm PT
maybe check out a copy of Kolomogorov's slim volume Foundations of the Theory of Probability for some light reading...
"...The theory of probability, as a mathematical discipline, can and should be developed from axioms in exactly the same way as Geometry and Algebra..."

it was interesting to read the later chapters of G. Birkhoff's Lattice Theory, Chapter XII "Applications to Logic and Probability" might interest you too... section 9 Probability and measure, begins with:

"Everyone talks about probability, but nobody can say what it is, to the satisfaction of others..."
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 3, 2018 - 05:43pm PT
"Everyone talks about probability, but nobody can say what it is, to the satisfaction of others..."


Echoing Feynman (and/or others) on QM?



Been saving this:

MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 3, 2018 - 06:14pm PT
Warning: climbing-related content


But also an astute viewpoint on statistics, at about 2 minutes


[Click to View YouTube Video]



First try I could only watch the first 12 minutes, but I have it on excellent advice that the interview gets better and better. I am trying to get further but had to interrupt for the above.
High Fructose Corn Spirit

Gym climber
Nov 3, 2018 - 07:54pm PT
yanqui,

My version featured goats instead of banana peels.

http://www.supertopo.com/climbing/thread.php?topic_id=1314136&msg=1315634#msg1315634

Nice to see you're thinking in terms of probability science, it was one of my favorite subjects in school.

It's too bad Tami Knight pulled all her posts, she had some funny responses on this thread and to this puzzle.

...

Pretty good exchange here with an MIT AI researcher...

[Click to View YouTube Video]

One of many thought-provoking ideas: the possibility we'll be giving birth to gods. Yikes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5FOumrXyww
healyje

Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
Nov 4, 2018 - 03:15am PT
MikeL wrote: Ed and healyje - How a thing supposedly works is not an understanding of what it is. The difference is fundamentally qualitative. It may look as though something is not amenable to change, but most things look like that to folks. Laws as such are forever being amended with this or that little fix. ("Here, let me fix that for ya.") They all seem to operate instrumental heuristics that make things tidy (or predictable) for us; they seem to allow us to order or direct perceived outcomes.

In this case what it is may be an interesting question in its own right, but the answer to the question is irrelevant to my point (about fundamental consciousness) whereas how it works is entirely relevant.

Also, our understanding of "Laws" may change and get tweaked, but not the underlying phenomena being described. For instance, our understanding of gravity has evolved with leaps, fixes, farts, and tweaks but the fundamental nature of gravity itself never changed during that time which is why we consider it something a 'fundamental' aspect of our universe. The salient point here is it's best not to confuse our fluid and evolving understanding of phenomena ("Laws") with observed behaviors of phenomena.

Again, Largo is positing the existence of a fundamental/universal consciousness which is dualistically co-resident with our brains and from which individual consciousness arises. My assertion is you can't have it both ways - it can't be immutable like gravity on one hand and mutable/evolving/changing as individual consciousnesses are on the other. Mass and gravity have an immutable, fundamental, and unchanging relationship; brains and consciousness have a mutable, evolving, and changing relationship.

And that's the problem with the very notion of a 'fundamental consciousness', it would be static if it were fundamental and by definition unconscious and unaware. And if it were mutable, conscious, and aware it endlessly begs the still unanswered question of why on earth (or anywhere else) would it need meat. Hell, why would it require a universe? And really, if I were an aware fundamental consciousness I can tell you it wouldn't be very damn long before suicide was at the very top of my bucket list.

A better metaphor would be a consumer relationship like between plants and photons, but then you'd be back to the antenna problem.
MH2

Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
Nov 4, 2018 - 06:35am PT
I've been wondering about the emerald jewel wasp and cockroach scenario that Ed recently posted about. The cockroach tries to fight off the wasp and may be successful. If the wasp stings the cockroach in the right place, the roach becomes submissive and can be led around by tugging on its antennae.

It sounded like the cockroach has a part of its nervous system where a kind of intentionality resides. If it gets stung it doesn't lose the ability to walk, so the venom isn't paralyzing the cockroach the way the venom of other parasitic wasps act on prey.

It would be nice to know what part of the roach nervous system the jewel wasp venom acts on, and its mode of action on neurons.

There is research under way but many questions still to answer. It is intriguing that if a stung cockroach is taken away from the wasp, the roach recovers.

Given the variety of maneuvers and counter-maneuvers described for the wasp vs roach battle, it is hard for me to see them as just stimulus/response machines. (and I know from neurophysiology research on "simple" systems that almost all animal behavior shows an adaptability to changing circumstances that almost no human-made machines are capable of)



If more is learned about the jewel wasp venom mechanism of action, it could be relevant to the topic of this thread.


https://www.fasebj.org/doi/abs/10.1096/fasebj.30.1_supplement.819.1
WBraun

climber
Nov 4, 2018 - 08:36am PT
Yes so fascinating that the gross materialists spend all their time studying everything but themselves.

They stubbornly think they are the hardware misleading themselves and everyone else in the name of their
illusionary so-called superior "Science" over everything else.
WBraun

climber
Nov 4, 2018 - 08:49am PT
There's nothing grouchy about it at all.

You're all science worshipers :-)

And love FACTS!

I give you science worshipers always nice facts against your so-called science guessing mental speculations .....:-)
yanqui

climber
Balcarce, Argentina
Nov 4, 2018 - 08:53am PT
Science:

[Click to View YouTube Video]
WBraun

climber
Nov 4, 2018 - 09:00am PT
More propaganda bullsh!t ^^^^

You think you're the only one having the real adventure ......
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